Body Surfing

Mt. Potosí or the Quechua. So how could these images, this language—the official dialect of the Incan empire, for God’s sake—be floating around his head, along with a comprehensive mental map of the hundreds of miles of tunnels that laced “El Cerro Rico” (“the rich hill,” as the Spanish called Potosí) some four hundred years ago? The miner’s name was Chinpukilla, and he’d been caught in a cave-in. For three months he languished without food or water beneath tons of fallen rock, slowly, painstakingly clawing his way to freedom, at which point he slipped like a wraith into the darkness.
    The final memory was even older. China. The latter Song Dynasty. A ne’er-do-well archer named Zhou Wong had his face blown off when he attempted to demonstrate the virtues of a huojian , or fire arrow, filled with the newly invented huoyao , or gunpowder. Wong was of high birth, so he wasn’t left to die. Instead he was cared for, his face covered with poultices that had more to do with sparing the eyes of the people around him than healing his hideous wounds. Nevertheless, over the course of six weeks the charred flesh of lips and nose and cheeks slowly regenerated, until one day his sister removed the poultices and revealed a visage that was if anything more perfect than the one he’d possessed before the accident.
    But the most uncanny detail of the dreams’ strangely parallel narratives was the way all three ended: after the men had healed themselves, they celebrated by having sex with the first woman they came upon—at which point all trace of them simply disappeared from Q.’s mind. The disappearance didn’t bother Q. as much as the men’s ungovernable, irresistible lust, which reminded Q. far too much of how he’d felt in the Porsche, when he simply had to have Sila’s lips around his dick. And hadn’t he healed himself too—or, at any rate, been impervious to injury, even as his friends’ bodies were broken, mangled, destroyed? How was this possible? And what could it possibly mean?
    As Dr. Thomas walked into his office Q. fell silent, eyes open, a comfortable smile on his lips. The sun filtered through the budding trees, the birds flitted between branches and sang cheerfully to each other. No, the boy thought again, he could not get him. Not here.
     
    In his office, the doctor pressed a button on his desk. A flat-screen monitor slid silently from a slot in the side of his desk; a keyboard emerged from beneath the marble surface and automatically adjusted itself to the optimum typing position. Though he loathed technology, J.D. Thomas recognized its usefulness. In a moment, he had accessed the database. Boris Petrovich Alushkin. Chinpukilla. Zhou Wong . The doctor had to guess at the spelling, but even so, it took less than ten minutes before a fourth name added itself to the list.
    Leo .
    On one level, the name was hardly a surprise. There were few Mogran left, so the choices were limited. But something didn’t add up. Leo had left the Qusay boy with a brain full of memories, any one of which incriminated him. It was almost as if he’d been in such a rush to get out that he hadn’t had time to wipe his host’s mind. That suggested two things: first, that the demon was working a larger scheme than playing Russian roulette with a Porsche and a cliff wall. Second, and rather more pertinently—at least for the boy sitting in hisgarden—that he would be back to finish what he’d neglected. Since Mogran couldn’t possess the same person twice, the demon would have to eliminate Q.’s memories manually.
    He would have to kill him.
    The demon could work though anyone, of course, but he would prefer the most surprising candidate. Someone who knew the boy. His mother, his father, a friend at school. Or someone who knew about the accident. Someone to whom Q. might have told his strange feelings.
    Sue Miller. Or—who knows—perhaps Leo would come for him?
    The doctor pushed himself away from his keyboard. An amazed smile played over his face. For nearly twenty years he’d been waiting for this, ever since his theories on collective memory had brought him to the Legion’s attention. But aside from being granted access to the Archive, he’d never actually met another gatherer, let alone a hunter, or a former host.
    He studied the boy’s skin through the open windows, unscratched despite the horrific accident he’d been in just a few days ago. As Q. suspected, his imperviousness, like the